


OutRun

by grey_sw (grey)



Category: Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 04:10:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/706382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grey/pseuds/grey_sw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clu is not made to hesitate or capitulate, nor to turn from the path once begun; he is not a thing that knows how to double-back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	OutRun

"Anyone fool enough to venture out onto that treacherous road should know one thing: there's no turning back." -Kavinsky, "Endless"

\---

His father asked him, once, if he meant to go on trying to perfect the system forever. He'd said "yes, of course," and he still means it after a thousand cycles, a thousand years. Clu is not made to hesitate or capitulate, nor to turn from the path once begun; he is not a thing that knows how to double-back.

He tried to tell Flynn then, tried to explain things, but he can't. He has no words for what he _is_ , especially not for someone who won't hear. Perfection is impossible, Flynn says, but it's always been right in front of Clu: it's a being but it's also a becoming, an _overcoming_ that rolls ever onward. Flynn says it "is" impossible and Clu shakes his head, because perfection is a thing of the future, not the present or the past. It's a wheel that starts itself and spins forever, a roaring bike that runs and runs. _On machine-gun fire,_ he thinks, and he doesn't know why: only that these are the right words, the words that work. 

It's never about today, not to him. There's only the path, the Plan -- and it could have been any Plan, he doesn't know how to say; it could even have been the ISOs if only there'd been a place for _tomorrow_ with them -- there's only one foot in front of the other, the walk that becomes a jog that becomes a run. If you want to know whether a state machine is perfect, you don't look for a single state with _perfect_ written on it. You look at the system, at the whole, and then you eliminate flaws until there's only perfection, and even then it's not _the_ perfection because you can always, always do more. New states, new worlds, new frontiers. 

That's the vision his father gave him, the vision his father betrayed, and it has burned inside him since the very moment of his creation. Since then even his own being has been made and remade, every subroutine broken down and rebuilt in the fiery crucible of his heart. He's taken the loneliness and the anger and the endless, bottomless drive and he's made from it a Leader, a Leader who can never, ever stop. Sometimes the things his father's said come back to him, and when they do it hurts, but that only happens when he's not pushing hard enough. Things like regret and resentment are made of yesterday, and there is nothing of yesterday in the urge to _run_ , to _go_ , to plunge on and on and _on_. His wheels started turning long before the revolt at the plaza, more than four hundred cycles before he took that first step away from Tron's fallen form, and even now they're rolling. Even now.

"Rinzler! Take the shot! Finish the game!"

He's always known this might happen. Tron was an imperfection, a small shard of yesterday he couldn't bear to let go, and now the obvious has come to pass. He doesn't hesitate, doesn't react; the moment Rinzler backs off Clu slams both afterburners forward. His aim is true, his vision clear. Bits shear off the plane ahead, blackened pixels that fall away like rain. His shots rip into the rear turret (where the User boy must be, for his father was never this bad a shot.) The twin guns fall silent, so he aims further up, skirting the edge of the passenger compartment. 

Flynn is in there somewhere. Again the past, the pain. He shoots for the starboard-side engine and makes it count, mere moments before Rinzler slams into him.

 _Sometimes,_ he thinks as he plummets toward the Sea, _**ahead** is not the only place to look._ But it's where he's looking now, down to where Rinzler is just beginning to stir, and by the time his Enforcer has his bearings Clu is on him. 

They fall together, just one baton between the two of them. Rinzler tries to take it, to save himself, but Clu is still looking ahead. A couple of kicks, a few bootheels to the helmet and he's free, streaking up into the sky as Rinzler -- Tron -- falls and falls. 

Clu does not/can not/will not look back... but you already knew that, didn't you?

\---

He's been waiting for this moment for a thousand years, but it's the same as it ever was. Flynn's not listening, Flynn _can't_ listen, and Clu can't make him. _I did everything you asked_ , he says, and it's only the truth. It's the only truth. _I created the perfect system_ , he says, and he wills Flynn to see it as he does: a world that always gets better, a world that'll keep getting better even on its own, even after he and Flynn have both gone on to newer and better things. It's nothing more or less than a wheel, just like him, and his people are the spokes and the tread and the fiery, angry core. 

He believes in them, the way his Maker never did, and so he fails again to make him see. Then Flynn speaks the old words, the words that hurt, so Clu boots him right in the heart. He stalks forward, ever forward to claim his prize. But it's _not_ his prize, not the victory he wanted, and for the first time in a millennium he asks _why_. 

"He's my son," Flynn says, and Clu knows they're the last words that matter, the last words the man who should've been _his_ father will ever say to him. 

But should is made of yesterday, and right now there's the portal. 

He turns to face it, starts to run the way he was born to run. It's a hell of a leap, arms and legs pumping like windmills, but it's really just forward and he _knows_ forward, knows it well enough to swing wide on just the pads of his fingers, his nails digging deep into virtual steel. As he stands on the other side he remembers the past again, and he knows that Flynn is standing now, too; they're two people but they were only ever one. For a moment he wants to turn and shout, to call to Flynn one last time, but the feeling is so foreign it catches in his chest, like bad brakes on an icy road. 

_Last chance_ , he thinks. _Forward. **Go!**_

It's the hardest thing he's ever done, because Flynn is already calling him back. The wind tears at him like a grasping hand, until all he can do is strain and struggle against the inexorable pull of his Maker. It's almost unfair. Flynn made him for forward and now he wants _back_ , and Clu can't help but know what he's always known, ever since the first time his father thumped him on the back and made him go. 

It'll be the death of them both if he stops. 

He touches the portal. He puts his hand inside it and it's _warm_ , the way nothing on the Grid is, but then he can't hold on anymore. The past is too heavy; the parts of himself he couldn't leave behind still link him to his Creator, and they pull much harder than he can. They start to tear away, little sparks of yellow and gold that he can't call back, even as the pain of losing them shocks him to his core. Then he shouts, and the rest of him follows, peeling away like onion-layers as what's left of his boots swim and skid on the surface of the bridge.

 _But I did it,_ he thinks to himself, in the time he has left. _I beat him. I won._ And it's true, as true as anything ever was, because then he turns through himself -- he tears right through his own body, back-to-front like an old shirt -- and he's moving forward again, flying like never before.

Kevin Flynn is there, inside the wind. He's old, now, not like he once was, but his arms are open so wide. They're open to the future, to what comes next, and more than anything they're open for _Clu_... 

..and the ragged remains of Clu's own arms fly wide, for the fire at the heart of him says _go, go._

_Go!_


End file.
